Niccolò Zucchi, (born Dec. 6, 1586, Parma, Duchy of Parma and Piacenza—died May 21, 1670, Rome) Italian astronomer who, in approximately 1616, designed one of the earliest reflecting telescopes, antedating those of James Gregory and Sir Isaac Newton. A professor at the Jesuit College in Rome, Zucchi developed an interest in astronomy from a meeting with Johannes Kepler. With this telescope Zucchi discovered the belts of the planetJupiter (1630) and examined the spots on Mars (1640). He also demonstrated (in 1652) that phosphors generate rather than store light. His book Optica philosophia experimentalis et ratione a fundamentis constituta (1652–56) inspired Gregory and Newton to build improved telescopes.

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...yellow glow, and it was sufficiently regarded that many traveled to Bologna to collect the mineral (called Bologna stones) and make their own phosphor. Subsequent work by Italian astronomer Niccolò Zucchi in 1652 demonstrated that the phosphorescence is emitted at longer wavelengths than needed to excite the phosphor; for instance, blue phosphorescence follows UV excitation in...